We have racked our yellow brains in vain, yet we
cannot succeed in discovering the reason which led the
men and women of France to found the remarkable institution
called the ‘Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals’. First, the reason escapes us because we see that
there are still so many unfortunate human beings who
appeal without result for a little care. Then, because all
these animals do not deserve so much benevolence and are
not as unhappy as all that. Except for the black lion who
is useful to people accustomed to wrapping their feet in
animal pelts, most of these creatures are wicked, very
wicked indeed.

Does not the bulldog — with his ugly teeth — come to
tear away the entire structure of the Paris Conference?
Which obliges the Flemish monkey and the Gallic cock to
confront the German eagle in the Ruhr alone. Did not
the Tiger, while he was still chained, devour several
ministries of the Republic? Were not millions and billions
uselessly expended through the agency of our glorious
friends Kolchak and Wrangel to buy the skin of
the Muscovite bear who, today more than ever, has no mind to let
people have it all their own way? (Ah! What an animal!)

Which of our friends in France has not cause to
complain of the vultures' misdeeds? Are not crows
disastrously destructive in the moral field? And what do
the 'chats-fourres' do if not profit by dissensions
and discords in society? Is there not one animal which
impudently permits that all disrespectful sons-in-law call
their mothers-in-law by its name? Are there not expensive
lovebirds which darken the conjugal bliss of many a
family? And are not cat-burglars the age-old enemies of
those who move from home?

Without taking account of the fact that the stronger
wolf is always right and that black sheep are a plague to
honest society, we... but let us speak a little,
before concluding, of colonial beasts.

Just at the moment when M. Guinal is ready to present
to the Academy of Sciences, through the medium of
M. Mangin, a note relating to the utilization of shark skin,
M. Albert Sarraut goes to the Isle of Dogs to deliver some
of his ministerial speeches to the frozen cod of Saint-Pierre-
et-Miquelon, and M. Citroen, for his part, launches
his civilizing ‘caterpillar’ across the Sahara. Both these
missions — official and semi-official — will very probably
obtain the happy result that people have a right to expect
from them, to whit, to know how to make a mouse bring
forth a mountain and consolidate the position of the
colonial sharks.

It is generally believed that our protectors always
carry out an ostrich policy. What a mistake, my friends!
Here is proof to the contrary: on the mere invitation of
the sardine at the ‘old port’, the Colonial Government
has not hesitated a moment to cause to be spent by:

to bring a few camels, cows and crocodiles from the
colonies to Marseilles. No effort, it must be admitted, was
spared by our civilizers to deck out a handful of native
sparrows — very obedient and very docile ones — in
peacock feathers to turn them into parrots or watch-dogs.
And if the African and Asian peoples are aware of this
‘peace’ and this ‘prosperity’, who then, are the busy
beavers but those untiring ‘disseminators of democracy’?

In short, the lot of all these animals is relatively easy.
If the members of the lofty S. P. C. A. had time to spare,
they would perhaps do more useful work in taking care of
the monkeys martyrized by Doctor Voronoff and the
poor native sheep which are forever being shorn.